Trek and Lance have been doing a lot of big things lately, from staging a massive comeback in the Tour de France (latter) to being the ride of choice for this year’s tour favorite, Alberto Contador (former). And now there’s The Bikes of Stages, a collaboration between Mr. Armstrong, the kind folks at Trek, and a bunch of highly-talented artists. From top to bottom, there are collaborations from Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, Marc Newson, and Yoshitomo Nara. Lance rode Nara’s take on the Trek Speed Concept today in the individual time trial of the TDF. Pretty cool to see a big(ger) bike brand like Trek playing around and doing cool stuff. I hope Lance takes the Hirst bike up Mont Ventoux.

My favorite, though, is this one-off by Barry McGee for the introduction of the Stages project.

So bad-ass. A top-end (admittedly, not in the components, which look to be SRAM Rival) Madone with a flat bar and platform pedals? With gold chainring bolts and a painted-on fork crown? Rad.